Attention all managers: Cyber attacks get worse

Cisco's Annual Security Report found that the overall number of disclosed vulnerabilities grew by 11.5 percent this year, compared to 2007. And if that wasn't bad enough, vulnerabilities in virtualization technology nearly tripled from 35 to 103 year over year. The annual report found that attacks are becoming increasingly blended, cross-vector and targeted.

Cisco said its researchers saw a 90 percent growth during 2008 in threats originating from legitimate domains, nearly double what was seen in 2007. The Cisco report also said spam accounted for nearly 200 billion messages each day, approximately 90 percent of worldwide email. The United States was the biggest source at 17.2 percent, ahead of Turkey at 9.2 percent, Russia at 8 percent and Canada at 4.7 percent.

And more online attackers were using real email accounts, with legitimate webmail providers to send spam. But there is some good news. The volume of malware successfully propagated via email attachments went down over the past two years--decreasing by 50 percent from 2005 and 2006.

Despite some signs of progress, this is no time to let your guard down. The Cisco report said to keep on the lookout for the following:

• Insider threats
• Data loss
• Mobility, remote working and new tools as risk factors

For more on security trends to watch out for:
- check out this NetworkWorld.com article

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